


Gol-tor Kal'uk Nash-veh

by sixbeforelunch



Series: Pi'maat [6]
Category: Star Trek
Genre: Chronic Illness, Comfort, Domestic, F/M, Healing, Insomnia, Obsessive thoughts, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 08:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21455110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixbeforelunch/pseuds/sixbeforelunch
Summary: "Let me help. A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words even over 'I love you.'"-- Jim Kirk, "City on the Edge of Forever"
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Pi'maat [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/313661
Comments: 28
Kudos: 88





	Gol-tor Kal'uk Nash-veh

**Author's Note:**

> I've gotten some absolutely lovely feedback on this series recently. ♥ Between that and some other stuff, I got the itch to revisit these characters. There's actually a plotty story that I want to tell someday, but of course this happened instead.
> 
> Content notes: Insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and the soul-crushing grind of living with a mental illness. Brief mentions of chronic pain, cancer, and a child in peril (the child is totally fine). Brief but kinda graphic description of a severe hand injury.
> 
> Many thanks to Beatrice Otter for the beta.

The patient rooms were dark, but outside of them the lights never dimmed. The hospital was ready, day and night, even when the halls were silent except for the whispered rustle of nurses and doctors making their rounds.

Veral sat cross-legged on a bench, his back straight against the wall. He did two shifts per month in the emergency care ward of the hospital in Klan-ne. Tonight was an exceptionally quiet night. A slow night in an emergency ward was a good thing, but the time did tend to drag when there was nothing to do. He did not even have clinic paperwork to occupy him. Zira had proved so adept at taking over the administrative aspects of the clinic that he scarcely had any paperwork at all now, excepting that directly related to patient care.

With nothing else to do, he observed. Two nurses were lounging by the reception desk. The younger one, Sekint, checked the comm in his pocket at irregular intervals, never more than four minutes apart. His wife was pregnant, and nearing her time. Veral was surprised that Sekint was still working instead of home with her, but if he was this restless at home, perhaps his wife had sent him away for her own peace. The older, T'Jyl, was doing a puzzle on a PADD

One patient lay on her side on a biobed. Seventy-eight year old female, presented with fever, chills, and a wracking cough. Diagnosis: ulm-razh influenza. He resisted the urge to check on her again. The drugs were working, and she was resting.

A member of the facilities staff was fixing the drink dispenser in the empty waiting room.

Seventy six minutes until his shift was over. He got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and stretched out his shoulders. Sekint looked up from his comm and set it aside. "Do you need anything, healer?"

Veral shook his head. He crossed to the reception desk, which was currently not staffed. The receptionist had gone to get food earlier, and not yet returned. The lift doors opened, and two Andorians got out, arguing loudly. The three Vulcans watched them cross the waiting room, then pause and become even louder just inside the doors. T'Jyl shook her head. "Such noise. They could learn something from the Vulcan way of handling disputes."

Veral thought of his mother and her twenty three year on-again, off-again dispute with her brother. "Is cold silence broken by the occasional cutting remark necessarily better?"

T'Jyl raised an eyebrow. "It's quieter."

It was that. He crossed to the arguing Andorians. He said nothing, but stood close enough that after a few moments they were forced to acknowledge him.

"What?" the shorter one demanded. 

"This is a hospital. Be respectful or be elsewhere."

The taller one looked like he was prepared to turn his aggression toward Veral and then, taking in Veral's size and the way that he had subtly shifted his weight into a defensive posture, thought better of it. The two of them left, still arguing. Veral rubbed his forehead. Seventy two minutes until his shift was over.

His patient had been woken by the noise. Her breathing was now unlabored and her fever had gone down, but her voice was raspy. "Am I well enough to leave?"

Veral reviewed her bio readings. "It would be best if someone accompanied you home. One of your children?" Her medical records said that she had given birth three times.

A flash of pain in her eyes. "I have no living children. The war took all of them, along with my spouse."

"I see." He should not have assumed. "Another family member then. Whom shall we call for you?"

"No one." She sat up straighter. "I can get home on my own."

She looked again at her vitals and then at her. Her vitals were within acceptable parameters, but there was an pallid undertone to her dark skin and she radiated a fatigue that he now suspected was caused by something more than just her illness. "You are well enough to leave the hospital, but you should not be alone."

She narrowed her eyes, and he could see her searching her tired mind for an argument that would convince him. "I do not wish to infect anyone else."

"You are not contagious."

She sagged a little. "I am tired of invoking right of kin."

He searched her face. Arguments occurred to him. It was not invoking right of kin to ask for someone to take you home from the hospital. Surely she would have done the same for any member of her family, or even her house, had they requested it. It was illogical not to avail oneself of help when one needed it. But he said none of this. He saw in her someone who had lost more than she ever imagined possible, and who was tired of being given charity. It was often easier to give help than to accept it .

"Do you live in Klan-ne?"

"Yes."

He nodded. "Very well. I will see that a car is ordered. You should not walk."

The receptionist had returned, and Veral gave him the task of arranging for transportation. The family would receive notification that she had been ill enough to require medical attention, and if the head of her family was competent, someone would at the very least check on her. He would have to be content with that. Once the discharge was complete and the patient had been seen to a car, Veral returned to his seat on the bench. The ward was now entirely empty. Forty seven minutes until his shift ended.

T'Jyl went back to her puzzle. Sekint went back to obsessively checking his comm unit. The repair person finished with the drink dispenser and left. The receptionist organized his desk.

Veral watched the aquarium in the middle of the waiting room. It too was a hospital ward of sorts. Injured sea creatures were placed there to recuperate. It currently housed a tentacled th'kib wrapped around a rock. It was recovering from a fight with a much larger member of its own species, and would be released once its lost tentacles finished growing back. He had read the chart out of curiosity, though it was not his patient. While his xenomedicine certification qualified him to treat any oxygen-breathing animal, he rarely ventured into the realm of the non-sapient animal. Less chance of being bitten, for one. There had been that one time with the Klingon on the _Eian_...but being bitten on the face by a Klingon meant something specific. What she had wanted, he had not been prepared to give her .

Forty four minutes until his shift ended.

A father was beamed in with a child who had become lethargic and weak without warning. He diagnosed kastik-hohl-vel poisoning, administered an anti-toxin, and had her admitted to the pediatric ward for overnight observation. A woman presented with a bloody cloth wrapped around her hand, and her finger attached to her hand by only a flap of skin. He stabilized her and called for the specialist surgeon to do the delicate work of reattaching the finger. The specialist arrived, and immediately took her up to a surgery suite.

Eleven minutes.

He was watching the robotic floor cleaner remove the blood that had been dripped onto the floor by the accident victim and sanitize the area when his relief walked in. T'Ker nodded to him, and disappeared into the locker room. At precisely the right time and not a second sooner or later, T'Ker presented herself.

"Healer, I take responsibility for this ward and all its patients." She glanced around at the empty space. "Should any exist."

"Healer, the ward is yours," Veral replied, and walked as quickly as dignity allowed into the locker room. He showered and changed there. He would have preferred to go straight home in his scrubs, but sometimes the smell of the hospital lingered on his clothing, and T'Lin could be sensitive to such reminders. She said that she would not have him coddle her, but he did not think it was coddling to avoid unnecessarily bringing to mind the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

It was dark outside, and the air was breezy and warm. As he walked through the hospital courtyard, he saw the father of the young child who had come in with kastik-hohl-vel poisoning sitting on a stone bench, his face buried in his hands. He would not have intruded, but the man happened to look up as he walked past, and met his eyes. There was anguish there. Veral paused. "Has your daughter worsened?" Had he missed something? Had he given the wrong anti-toxin?

"No," the man said. "She is well. My mother is with her now." He swallowed. "I was responsible for her. She nearly died because I was not paying attention and she got into the kastik-hohl-vel."

Veral spread his hands. "I have no children, but my mother has reminded me often that from the ages of one to three, I seemed to have no goal in life except to end my life in as stupid a manner as possible . Young children are curious and they are inexperienced and they are surprisingly adept at outwitting their caregivers when they want something. It was not your fault. You were quick to see that something was wrong and bring her to a place where she could be helped. That is the more important thing."

"It may be so," the main said in a harsh whisper. Veral turned away quickly and left him, to give him the privacy he needed.

Klan-ne was built into a hillside that sloped down toward the sea. The hospital sat near the top of the hill, and getting down to the port meant walking down steep grades and seemingly endless flights of stairs. There were other options for those who were unable to handle the difficult terrain, but Veral enjoyed the challenge of it. It cleared his mind.

At the port, he found the ferry already docked. He remembered the first time he had come to Klan-ne, and taken multiple trains to reach Shi'aluk. He had not known then that all of the coastal cities were connected by ferries . He took his seat and glanced around. The ferry was about one third full. He put on his headphones, and subvocalized so that only the computer in the headphones could understand him, "Play new releases from the Artuk Collective." A moment later, the music began to play, clear and vibrant, a sweeping choral performance. The ferry pulled away from the dock, and proceeded down the coast. To his right, the ocean was ink black, like looking into a void. On his left, the shore passed by, often nearly as dark, other times bathed in the soft light of a town or a lighthouse that still lit the way for ships even though they were not strictly needed anymore.

Veral closed his eyes, let the music pass over him. He took note of the anxiety creeping up his spine and did not dismiss it. He embraced it, sat with it, considered it. Above all, he listened.

_You may have slept well last night, but two nights in a row is too much to expect. You will not sleep tonight,_ it whispered, and he acknowledged that this was a possibility.

_You are weak,_ it said, and he did not argue. He was, after all, weak in some ways and strong in others.

_You will never be well again,_ it insisted, and he allowed that this might be so, or it might not. He could not know the future.

He was the only person to get off at Shi'aluk, and the town was dark and empty as he made his way home.

Shi'aluk too was built on a hill, but a less steep one than Klan-ne. He made his way through the center of the town, past his clinic, past Zira's apartment, past the stall where he most often got breakfast on days when he did not eat at home. The house was asleep when Veral finally arrived. It would not have been logical for anyone to wait up for him. He climbed the stairs from the guest level to the family level of the house, pushing aside the heavy curtain when he reached the top of the stairs. He felt himself relax when the curtain closed behind him. Home. He had lived in Shi'aluk for over a year now, but it still surprised him how strongly he now associated this place with home.

The lingering scent of food in the air reminded him of how long it had been since he had eaten. He was not surprised to see a plate of food in the 'fresher, set aside for him. It was a bowl of stew made with pieces of ajim, a hearty fungus that was essentially tasteless on its own, but took on other flavors easily. Judging by the heavy use of the ithaika herb, Xan had made it.

He was seated at the counter, eating his re-heated stew when a soft step made him lift his head. T'Lin took the seat next to him, and rested her head on his arm.

"You had a difficult day," he said. It was not a question. He could feel it.

A sharva cried out in the distance, it's scream momentarily drowning out the sound of the insects in the garden. He ate his meal in silence, cleaned his plates and put them away, and went upstairs with her, to the fourth floor where they had their own small suite of rooms. A full bathroom had recently been added to it, and Veral stripped out of his clothing and sat in the hot room for fifteen minutes the moment he got inside. The sonic shower at the hospital had cleaned him, but the hot room soothed him. He had half-hoped that T'Lin would join him, but she did not offer and he did not ask. After cleaning his teeth, he came out, still naked, and found T'Lin in his bed, a book in her hands. Books had a tendency to proliferate around her, and he had set the rule that she was always welcome in his bed, but she could be accompanied by no more than three books at a time. He was prepared to make exceptions for days when her chronic pain flared up, but on those days, she tended to stick to her own room, where she had arranged everything as she needed it for times when her pain was bad.

He dressed in the sleeveless tunic that he most often wore to bed, and paused by the painting on the wall. It was new. He could feel T'Lin watching him, trying to gauge his reaction to it. It was an image of a sehlat curled on a rock, abstract in nature, and done in colors of green and gold and orange and red, with highlights of silver and copper. He looked around, and took in the room as a whole. In the process of adding a private bath, they had enlarged the suite so that there was more room in his bedroom, along with a small home office where he could work without having to go to his clinic.

He had given T'Lin free reign on the decorations, and she had managed to create for him a nearly perfect space. The walls were a warm, textured reddish-brown. In addition to the picture of the sehlat, there was a stone relief sculpture displaying a desert scene, and a collage of sorts made of pressed flowers and leaves. She had put a large chair and ottoman by the bed, and arranged a meditation area in the corner of the room.

The cover on the bed was real valit fur--harvested, of course, from creatures that had died of natural causes, and probably from a preserve where they had lived long and prosperous lives--in a rich cream color. Above the bed, there was an embroidered tapestry, an image of a seascape, beautifully rendered in exquisite detail from the boats in the foreground to the ipsas jumping out of the water in the far background.

Without taking his eyes from the tapestry, he said, "You have done this room better than I imagined it could be done. I thank you." She did not respond, but he felt her pleasure at his words. He inclined his head. "Was this not your marriage gift?"

"One of them," she said. "I spend enough time in here that I think it is doing its intended purpose where it is." She looked at it. "Does it displease you there?"

"No." He could feel her curiosity and her attempt to make sense of his reaction. She would not pry, but he did not want to explain just then. He got between the sheets and slid closer to her. She closed her book and set it aside. 

"Why was your day hard?" he asked.

T'Lin smoothed the fur of the blanket with elegant fingers. "Half way through my first class this morning, I developed a headache. I took an analgesic, but it did not abate, so I went to the clinic on the campus. The doctor there took one look at my medical file and insisted that I go to the hospital instead. He wanted to call for a site-to-site emergency transport, and I only just managed to convince him that it was not necessary."

Veral could feel the sharp current of emotion barely contained under her calm exterior, and chose his words carefully. "No doubt an unpleasant experience, and certainly an emergency transport would have been excessive, but...aduna, your medical records are...complex in a way rarely seen outside of medical journals and textbooks."

Her hands stilled, and then resumed stroking the fur. "I am in several medical journals."

He was well aware of that. The anonymous nature of those write ups meant that he had more than once been in the odd position of listening to his colleagues discuss his wife's condition. The 'chronic recurring nerve pain' that was, for them, an intellectual exercise meant to him holding the person he cared for most in the universe while she trembled in pain and they counted off long seconds before her medicine began to take effect.

"My point exactly. You are an uncommon patient. I can understand why someone staffing a college medical clinic hesitated to treat you." Most college clinics were staffed by medics rather than full doctor-healers because most college students were in good health and did not need access to more than the most basic medical care. T'Lin happened to be the exception that put that rule to the test.

T'Lin made a noise that meant she did not agree with him, but did not want to argue the point.

"What did they say at the hospital?" T'Lin picked her book back up and began to read. Veral lifted his head from the pillow. "What did they say?"

"I never went. I endured the pain until it went away."

Veral sat up. "You can't simply ignore your pain." He started to reach across her, and T'Lin shut her book with a snap.

"If you take out a medical scanner, I am sleeping in my own bed tonight. It was a headache. It has gone."

He relented and did not pull out the medical kit in the nightstand, but neither was he prepared to give up the point. "You are at a higher risk for aneurysm and stroke..."

"I had no symptoms of a stroke, and an aneurysm would be far more painful than that."

"Your pain scale is skewed," Veral pointed out.

T'Lin pressed her lips together. "Our agreement is that you approach my health like my husband and not like my doctor."

"I am approaching it like your husband!" T'Lin raised an eyebrow. Veral took a slow breath and calmed himself. "T'Lin, you are k'hat'n'dlawa." Half of my heart and soul. He used the old word, not the modern short form. They meant the same thing, but the old word did not try to elide the passion behind it, and Veral could not abide even a gossamer veil over his emotions at that moment. "I cannot lose you."

But even as he said it, he knew what her response would be. It was not in his power to safeguard her absolutely, and she wanted to live, not merely exist in an overprotective bubble. He needed to trust her to manage her own health and know herself. He held up a hand to forestall her saying exactly that, and asked, "If the headache recurs, will you have it checked?"

"I will."

"Thank you."

T'Lin tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "How did Najin die?"

Veral stiffened, and forced himself to relax. They had never discussed the death of his first bondmate. "Cancer."

"I did not think people died of cancer anymore." She frowned. "In fact they assured me of it when they told me how high my risk of it had become."

"It is rare," he confirmed quickly. "Almost unheard of, in fact. A confluence of circumstance led to her death. It was a particularly aggressive form of cancer. She was largely asymptomatic until it was well advanced. But what truly caused her death was that she was off world at the time, on an archaeological expedition with limited medical care available. She was initially misdiagnosed, and then she received sub-standard care in a non-Federation hospital. By the time transportation back to Vulcan was arranged, it was too late. She died en route."

T'Lin rested her hand on his. "Why do you feel guilty?"

He wanted to say that he didn't, that such a thing would be highly illogical, but it was pointless to lie to her. "We were in regular communication. She mentioned feeling unwell at times, but we both dismissed it as a reaction to the strange climate and unfamiliar routine. Sometimes I think if I had been paying better attention, she might have been diagnosed in time to be saved."

"Ah," T'Lin said, as if something had become clear. He supposed it had. She lifted his hand to her mouth and gently kissed his palm. "If I die, it will not be because of something you did or did not do. It will not be because of something I did or did not do. It will simply be."

"Kaiidith."

"Indeed." She released his hand. "I do not plan to die any time soon. If was only a headache."

"Still, I dislike that you had to endure it. If you are going to attend that school, they have a duty to ensure that you have adequate medical care on site."

A gust of wind outside followed by the sound of rain on the window distracted them both momentarily. He was learning to enjoy the rain, which was good because he had settled in one of the few places on the planet that got regular, heavy rainfall.

T'Lin turned her attention back to him. "If you intend to take up my cause..."

"No," Veral assured her. "I am going to ask Selesh to do it. He is better at these things."

T'Lin opened her mouth as if to argue and then appeared to change her mind. "I would appreciate that," she said. "Someone in the medical office who does not pale at the sight of my records would be...preferable." She opened her book.

He lay down and watched her read, letting the sensation of her mind enraptured wash over him. After several minutes, she glanced at him and asked, "Do you want me to turn out the light?"

"No."

He liked watching her read. Her lips parted slightly, and her eyes would widen and narrow as they danced across the page. He liked feeling her read. It was a sensation of total focus akin to meditation, but not quite the same. He wanted to ask her to read to him. It didn't matter what she was reading, he just wanted to hear her voice. But it seemed like a foolish thing to ask, and so he didn't.

Eventually, she closed her book and turned out the light and lay down next to him. He wrapped his arms around her and felt her breathing even out and slow, felt her mind slip away into unconsciousness.

His mind, to his disappointment but not surprise, remained alert. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. These sleepless nights did his mental wellbeing no favors. He ruminated, and not on anything worthwhile. It was on these nights that past mistakes and the potential for future errors haunted him. He had come a long way from the depression and acute trauma of his return from the war, but he still struggled. Had he made a mistake? Had he hurt a patient? Was he sure? Was he absolutely sure? Had he gotten the dosage right on the child's anti-toxin? Should he have let the woman go home alone? Should he not have insisted that someone accompany her? Shouldn't he have pressed T'Lin harder to consent to a quick scan?

He recognized the start of an obsessive thought spiral, and knew that staying in bed would not be conducive to stopping it. So he got up, slipped from the room, and went into T'Lin's bedroom. One of the things that she kept in her room for the bad days was a kettle and a selection of teas. He turned on the kettle and sat down on the edge of her bed, absently running his fingers through the blanket.

Every patient he had seen in the past several months came into his mind, wanting to know if he had really treated them properly. He was chasing after certainty in an uncertain universe. It was unhealthy. Kaiidith. Not resignation. Not a lack of care. It was acceptance of the limits of his ability to control the reality in which he lived. It was acceptance of his limits, full stop.

The water boiled, and he poured it over a mix of Terran ginger and rafith.

He watched it steep, and wished that the Vulcan mind was not quite so resistant to psychopharmacology. A Human colleague, using the colorful language common to the species, had said, "Your brains when presented with a psychotropic most commonly make an obscene gesture in its general direction and keep on doing whatever it was they were going to do anyway. And on the rare occasion when they don't, things have a tendency to get weird. Not always, but kind of a lot, relative to most species." He had not been wrong. Of all emotions, envy was among the most illogical, but when Zira had casually asked him for a sleep aid and he had considered the sheer amount of them available to her, all highly effective and with minimal side effects, he had for a moment wished that his brain could be so easily manipulated.

Vulcans had markedly fewer options and in his case an otherwise benign mutation, un-fixable due to absurd anti-genetic engineering laws, cut them down even more.

_You've been to Gol,_ whispered the insidious part of his mind. _You should not need drugs to regulate your mental state or put yourself to sleep._

He ignored it. A mind could be injured or diseased as a body could, and the logical thing was to use every tool at one's disposal to return it to health.

"You are not at peace," T'Lin said, startling him from his thoughts. She was standing in the doorway.

"No." He stirred the tea and discarded the used teabag. "I apologize if I woke you."

She crossed to him, put her hand on his arm. "Tell me."

He was quiet for some time. It seemed even the insects had gone silent. The only sound was a faint rustle of leaves. He drew a breath, let it out. "I am very tired."

She understood at once that it was not the physical exhaustion of insomnia, but the mental, spiritual exhaustion of fighting day in and day out to maintain a mental equilibrium.

"Gol-tor kal'uk nash-veh," she said. Let me help. She had spoken, not her own language of Xir'tani, but Golic. His lakh nel-dath, his heartbeat language. It was a small thing, but life was built out of small things. A good person was made, not with one grand gesture of kindness, but with a thousand little ones.

He wanted to tell her to go back to sleep, to say that he did not need help, but...she accepted his help when she needed it. It was often easier to give than to receive help.

They sat together on her bed while he drank the tea. When he finished, he turned to her and said, "I do not know how."

She steepled her fingers together in thought. "Do you mean that you do not know how to accept my help?"

"No." And then honesty forced him to say, "Yes, a little, but that I can learn. I mean I do not know what I need."

She thought for a moment. "Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. What do you want in this moment?"

"Will you--" Veral stopped, frowned. T'Lin said nothing, waiting. "Will you give me a massage?"

"Of course," she said. She directed him back to his room. Veral took off his tunic lay down on the bed. When she came in, he narrowed his eyes at the bottle in her hand. She cocked her head in question. "Is there a problem?"

"No." He raised an eyebrow. "Do you know how much that oil cost?"

"I do not. Your mother sent it to me following our marriage."

"I know," he said, and propped himself up on his elbows. "It is not replicated. It is true ikar, grown in the shadow of Seleya, and she had to sell a spaceship to buy it."

T'Lin looked at the bottle in her hand. "A spaceship?"

"A small one," Veral said. "And not even warp capable, though that did not spare me the frequent reminders."

"Roll over," T'Lin commanded him. She straddled him, and opened the bottle. The scent of the oil, a complex and many-layered one that put Veral in mind of the desert at night, filled the room, and she poured a thin stream between his shoulder blades. "You have aroused my curiosity."

_Among other things_, he heard her think. It was gratifying to be admired in that way, but he had no desire for sex then. Instead, he decided to answer the question. "My family was not pleased when I arrived home barely two days after our wedding." He made a small sound of pleasure as she dug her thumbs into a sore spot by his shoulder blade. "When they found out that I had left without even saying goodbye...both of my parents made clear their intense disapprobation." That was something of an understatement. T'Kara had left the room to "settle myself before I speak words that cannot be unspoken." Skan had just stared at him in shock and disappointment, and when Veral had tried to use pon farr to defend himself, he had snapped, "If you could speak, you had logic enough to know that you were acting shamefully." 

"I learned later that your mother also called and had some questions for my mother about my suitability as a mate." He allowed a rueful twist of his lips. "And as a person."

"She never told me that," T'Lin said. "I took no offense. Why would you stay with someone you did not even know? You had gotten what you needed."

He tensed, and T'Lin began running broad strokes across his back. Not the most relaxing conversation, but it had begun now, and they might as well see it through.

"I had no right to take what I needed, as you put it, and leave you as though you were just a resource to be used. It _was_ wrong. Your family had a right to raise concerns." He sighed a little as her hands skimmed his lower back, just above his chenesi. She was respectful of his desire, or lack of it, and did not pay any special attention to his chenesi, instead sweeping her thumbs down his spine between them and continuing her ministrations on his gluteal muscles. "In any case, it transpired that to assure your family that mine highly valued you, my mother arranged for the most expensive bride gift she could manage. True ikar oil, and a hand-embroidered tapestry from the Hafa monastery in Han-shir."

T'Lin paused. "There is a Hafa hanging over this bed?" She went back to her task and added, "I understand now why seeing it there fazed you."

"Mmm. Do you consider yourself sufficiently valued?"

"I do not need material things to know that I am valued," T'Lin said. "Although the gifts were very nice, and I almost think I should thank you for the actions that led to me having them. I hope it did not cause your mother too much hardship to arrange the gift."

Veral snorted. It was not something he ever would have done in front of anyone else, and he felt a shiver of pleasure run through T'Lin. She was savoring the thought of having facets of him all to herself, and he said, _I am yours in a way that I am no one else's._ Then, continuing their verbal conversation, "Do not concern yourself with that. My mother has more than she knows what to do with. She likes accumulating wealth. In the time before the reform she would have been an oligarch. Or a warlord. Fortunately the government checks her by taking her excess before she can become too attached to it. There was no hardship, whatever she may have tried to insinuate ."

They fell silent then, and T'Lin continued her work, running her hands over his back, finding the knots of tight muscle and working them out. She buried her hands in his hair and ran her nails against his scalp, making him shiver. He relaxed by degrees, not quite to the point of sleep, but he could feel his mind ease and rational thought begin to return.

T'Lin had him roll over and worked the muscles in his neck and his chest and his thighs. She ran her oil slick fingers over his face, and between the pass of her hands over his meld points and their natural sensitivity to one another, their minds fell into a light meld. _Taluhk nash-veh k'dular, ashayam_ I cherish thee, beloved. Which one of them had thought it? It hardly mattered. They both felt it.

She pulled away, and smoothed the hair from his face. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes." He put away needless pride. "Will you read to me?"

She did not think oddly of him for the request. Her eyebrow rose in curiosity. "Read what?"

"It does not matter. Something you enjoy. I find the sound of your voice soothing, and when you read a good book your mind..." He groped for a word to describe it. "Shimmers."

T'Lin shook her head, not understanding, and Veral touched his hand to her face, showing her what he meant. She gasped and murmured, "That's beautiful."

"It is, and restful."

T'Lin put the oil away and arranged the sheets so that they were both comfortable. She sat up in bed, and Veral rolled onto his side and threw an arm over her legs. When they had settled, she picked up her book and started reading. Knowing that he did not actually care about the plot, she simply picked up where she had left off earlier.

_"Of course!" cried Professor Ugon. "We've been going about this entirely the wrong way. We assumed that Irat was trying to protect the stone. What if he was the one trying to destroy it?"_

_"Destroy it!" Killam paced across the room. "But that makes no sense. He was the one arguing against its destruction. He arranged extra protection during the riots."_

_"Yes, yes," Professor Ugon said impatiently. "But people do change their minds, you know. It's not often that they change their mind so profoundly, I grant you, but it does happen. Think." She began ticking items off on her fingers. "He came back from the conference upset. 'Like someone who had just had his very foundation shattered,' his daughter said. We know that he had a long conversation with the head of the Anti-Royalists, and something happened at that meeting that caused him to become very upset. He put off publishing an editorial in which he was going to argue that the stone needed to be persevered at all costs."_

_Killam sat down heavily. "But if you're right and he was somehow convinced that the stone needed to be destroyed... Do you know what this means?"_

_"I do," said Professor Ugon. "It means the murderer is--"_

Veral didn't learn who the murderer was. He had fallen into a restful sleep.

end


End file.
